


a seduction in progress

by arcanawildcard, clairelutra



Series: proof of concept [4]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, F/M, Mentor/Protégé, Sirens, Vampires, it's twilight if edward had a gun and bella got her start killing a man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22345441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcanawildcard/pseuds/arcanawildcard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairelutra/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: He shook off the distraction and reached for his silver bullets, quietly loading his gun and cocking it at the siren.She looked up sharply at the noise, locking slit golden eyes with his own grey, and he waited out that one suspended moment.(Sirens never failed to surprise, and it had been far too long since he’d had a fight.)Then she squawked, jumped, and flailed ungracefully until she crashed face first into the water, barely submerged in the shallows.Akira slowly lowered the gun, bemused....Well.Hehadsaid that sirens never failed to surprise.
Relationships: Amamiya Ren/Takamaki Ann, Kurusu Akira/Takamaki Ann, Persona 5 Protagonist/Takamaki Ann
Series: proof of concept [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1276436
Comments: 3
Kudos: 95





	a seduction in progress

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous said: How about Akirann for Monster/Monster Hunter/Monster Tamer AU? 
> 
> full admission that i no longer have any idea what i'm doing

Being a vampire granted Akira a certain kind of immortality that was _dead useful_ for monster hunting, but (perhaps understandably) something he didn’t really want spread around, especially among the clients that hired him to hunt, well. Monsters.

That meant trying to fake the song and dance of being very careful around the siren he’d been hired to put down.

Sirens were a subset of charm-witches, likely but not necessarily humanoid, who sang a deadly song to lure men to their deaths. Truly a terrifying prospect if you didn’t have magical immunity, or so he’d gathered from the the pale faces of the villagers who lived next to the inlet where she resided.

(There’s only been one casualty in the whole time she’d been here, which was making him doubt that this was a siren at all. It could also be a lost mermaid who liked to sing, a lonely river nymph, or even just an average copycat with bad luck. Hell, it could be a _human_ for all the evidence the villagers were willing to part with.

Still. They were paying him. The commission he got would pay for his Phantom Thief guild membership for another year. His pride wasn’t above that.)

All this to say that it was with less trepidation that he maybe should have felt that he tracked the pretty tune that lurked at the edge of the glade down to the water’s edge

The target in question was classically seated naked on a rock, almost definitely a siren, and looking very lonely indeed as she swished her bare toes in the waves.

...Wasn’t he supposed to be immune to charm spells?

All he wanted to do was...

 _Mmmm, bad line of thought._ He shook off the distraction and reached for his silver bullets, quietly loading his gun and cocking it at the siren.

She looked up sharply at the noise, locking slit golden eyes with his own grey, and he waited out that one suspended moment.

(Sirens never failed to surprise, and it had been far too long since he’d had a fight.)

Then she squawked, jumped, and flailed ungracefully until she crashed face first into the water, barely submerged in the shallows.

Akira slowly lowered the gun, bemused.

...Well.

He _had_ said that sirens never failed to surprise.

She just laid there for a second, then lurched up and backwards, shooting one highly alarmed glance in his direction before scrambling behind the rock with a rather unstealthy series of splashes.

“Um, don’t shoot?” she squeaked once hidden.

He’d be honest here; he’d never met a siren who used ‘charmingly inept’ as a seduction tactic.

(It was working, though. He had to give her that.)

“Are you the siren that’s been haunting that village over there?”

“Um...” she said, and peeked around the rock. Her single visible eye had gone from gold to sky blue. “Kiiiind of? I-it’s a long story.”

“I was hired to exterminate you,” he informed her mildly. It was a much less appealing prospect than it had been before he’d heard her speak, but, well. Siren. That was the whole _point_. “You’ve been luring men to their deaths.”

“Oh, come on!” she snapped. Her head disappeared behind the rock again, this time with a scowl. “It was just one! And he _deserved_ it!”

“Did he?” All the reports he’d heard of Baron Kamoshida had been glowing. Most were horrified and heartbroken that he was gone.

“My best friend. He _ruined_ her. Death was too kind.”

It was spoken in the flat, hard tone of someone who’d run the question over in their mind many times and come to the same conclusion every repetition.

“...Touché.”

She sighed, sounding exhausted, then: “Oh! Maybe you’d know—is there any way to _un_ become a siren? He’d already been after me, so charm spells seemed like the best way to get to him, but I didn’t realize I’d transform until after I drowned him.”

The scars Father Shido had left on his neck burned for a moment, then he said, “Afraid not.”

“Darn it.”

It was such a _mild_ response for someone who’d been cursed with immortality that he blinked. Come to think of it, Kamoshida had only turned up as a corpse a couple of years ago, hadn’t he?

“...How old are you, again?”

“Uhh... well, I _was_ sixteen, but it’s been kind of a while since then, y’know? I lost track. Can’t be _too_ much older than that, though.” She paused. “Maybe I’m _still_ sixteen.”

“Baron Kamoshida died two years ago,” he said, deadpan-flat.

“Oh!” A forehead, a pair of bright blue eyes, tangled blonde hair, and several fingers became visible over the top of the rock. “Then I’m eighteen... I think. Is it November yet?”

“Next month.”

“Seventeen,” she amended, then poked her whole head over the rock, apparently having forgot about the gun. “How old are you?”

“Around two hundred,” he said vaguely. Definitely closer to three hundred, but still technically two hundred-something. Probably. He should probably check on that.

“Wow...” Her eyes were wide as saucers.

Seventeen might technically be an adult for a human in these times, but...

_Innocent.  
_

He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he pulled the trigger here. He wasn’t even entirely sure he’d be able to live with himself if he walked away at all.

(If Sojiro hadn’t picked him up by the scruff and set him on his feet when he’d first been turned...)

He heaved a silent sigh, then started unloading his gun, clapping the bullets into his gloved palm and putting them back in their pouch. That done, he met her gaze and tilted his head in a gesture for her to come over.

She shrank down. “I’m not really dressed for company. Or dressed at all.”

 _I noticed_. It was surprising that she cared about it, though.

...Though. Come to think of it, it would probably make sense that she was a bit body shy, given how new she was to the ‘siren’ business.

He shrugged off his coat and held it out to her, pointedly turning his head away.

It didn’t take much time at all for her to come out from behind the rock, much less warily than he might have expected, one arm clamped over her ample chest and the other absently hiding her crotch.

(In his defense, his peripheral vision was _very_ good and he didn’t look any closer than what he was already seeing.

...Wasn’t his libido supposed to be dead too?)

She covered as much of herself up in his coat as she could, shooting him curious looks as he removed one of his more decorative belts to secure it around her waist.

“Don’t touch the pockets,” he instructed. There was a second part to that, something about there being dangerous things in there, but she was... much more _distracting_ than he was used to dealing with, especially now that she was wearing _his coat_ , and the words slipped away from him.

“So, uh... what are we doing?” she said, chill and curious and sounding like she’d be game for most of it, and suddenly he was _very glad_ that he was the hunter who’d found her.

“Making you my apprentice,” he said, and reached inside his doublet for an empty phial.

“Appre-what?” then, “Meep!” as as he sank one of his fangs into his own wrist and caught the trail of blood in the vessel.

“Apprentice. It’s not good for a young fae to be on their own.” He put a cork in the phial and closed his fist around it—a tracking spell, a protection spell, a minor luck spell, a stealth spell... and that was about as much as he could imbue into an ounce of his own blood. “That’s how monsters are made.”

“Ohh...” she said, watching as he pulled out a cord and secured the charm. “Wait. What?!”

( _Expressive._ It was... nice.)

He looped the cord around her neck, looping it into a knot and casting another few spells making sure that it couldn’t be used to hurt her and couldn’t be removed until she was strong enough to remove it herself. Stronger than a basic durability spell and made sure she wouldn’t be stuck carrying him around forever if this didn’t work out and he was indisposed.

“They do things they shouldn’t because they don’t know better,” he explained absently. "So I’ll make sure you know better.”

“That’s pretty ominous.”

He shot her a dry look as he let go and gestured for her to follow him. “Don’t touch the shiny rocks. Don’t stand in bright places. Don’t eat anything that can talk.”

“Oh, uh, o-okay? ‘Shiny rocks’...? Is that, like, gemstones, or gold, or— hey wait, where are we going?”

‘Wouldn’t you like to know’ probably wouldn’t be the best thing to say here, would it. He decided on honesty instead: “First clothes, then to register you as my legal charge with the vampire queen, then get you a guild membership, then go take care of a chupacabra infestation in the lower reaches.”

“Chupacabra infe— _that sounds kind of important!”_

He frowned as he led the way back to the village, trees passing them by in silent vigil. “Does it?”

“Goats are some people’s livelihoods, y’know?” She sounded genuinely upset about this. “How long will the rest of this stuff take?”

“A couple of weeks...?” he said, surprised into seriousness.

“Their goats will all be dead by then!”

...Huh. They would, wouldn’t they.

Akira kept walking through the profound moment of realization that he didn’t spend nearly enough time around humans anymore.

“Okay, how about this: we get me some clothes, and then take care of the chupacabra infestation, and _then_ do the other stuff.”

Innocent, expressive, and conscientious. He found himself half-smiling as he glanced over his shoulder. “Sounds good.”

She let out an _ughhhh..._ of exasperated relief.

Maybe she wasn’t human anymore, but she was only two years out from it, not well over two hundred. Maybe he’d be getting more out of this apprenticeship than he’d thought.

* * *

They bought clothes from the village and then moved onto the southern reaches, collected chupacabra pelts for the client and then roasted the bodies so Akira could show his new protégé how to draw the life energy she needed out of them.

Then they headed back to the capital, where he had a conversation with the queen. She shouted a lot and then handed him the paperwork (good old Sae), and it was only when he was trying to fill it out that he realized he’d never asked for his new apprentice’s name.

Hm.

Sae didn’t shout at him for that, just gave him one of the most long-suffering looks he’d even seen and let him take the paperwork home.

(Lady Ann Takamaki of Shujin was his new apprentice, apparently—though he better knew her as a child of sunshine who had rapidly established herself as his lifeline.

Innocent, expressive, conscientious, and more human than not. All he had to do was glance at her to get a second opinion on his decisions, and that was coming in even more handy than he’d guessed it would.)

After that, it was a guild membership, then Igor telling him to go get Ann checked in with the sirens too or Philemon would get angry, and it was some point during that long, relentless search for Belladonna that Ann finally asked.

“So... why are you doing all this for me, anyway? What do you get out of it?”

“Company. Help with work. Moral support.”

“...Seriously?” she asked. On anyone else, it would have sounded at least a little bit flat, but with her there was only curiosity to be found. _“Moral support?”_

“Especially moral support.”

She was doing a stellar job at propping them up for him while he brushed away two hundred-odd years of dust and decay under her guidance.

She flopped back on her inn bed with a groan, a soft _fwumph_ of fabric and a little grunt in her lungs, her scent swirling in little eddies around the room. “Well. You do you, I guess. Going to bed yet?”

“In a bit,” he said, instead of _only if you join me_ , because he was pretty sure that would earn him a weird look that said he’d misstepped yet again.

He was learning!

“Okay,” she said, then yawned. “‘Night.”

“Goodnight.”

Silence, except for the rustling of bedclothes and mattress while Ann got comfortable, and then:

“And hey, Akira?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks. You really saved me. Literally.”

He glanced sideways, just enough to catch her soft smile amid a pool of blankets and blonde curls, and couldn’t help a little sigh. “...My pleasure.”

**Author's Note:**

> [join us!](https://clairelutra.tumblr.com/ask) we have fun here :'D
> 
> (alternately [here](https://arcanawildcard.tumblr.com/ask) (just for requests))
> 
> boyfriend material will now happen (to the best of my abilities) every week on fridays. cheers!


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